Supposedly one’s introduction to a Red Sox game at Fenway is always the splendor of the grass. The fan walks up the ramp from the park’s dingy bowels into the glorious green of an outfield so immaculate it appears to have been mown by God.

Recently, during my 9-year-old Boston terrier’s second echocardiogram appointment, I was not, unlike the first appointment, focusing on the intimacy of Cookie’s beating heart tissue and blood flow on the screen.

As a grade schooler in the late 1950s, I really missed my dad on Saturdays. Dad would close down his dental practice at noon, come home, and then jump into a car with Grandpa and a few racing pals and head to the local horse track.